Alone In Space

[NASAFanboy]

Kerbin was gone. There was no doubt about it. The cheering crowds, the magnificent cities, all gone.

The sudden loss of contact with CAPCOM had struck the crew hard. They had never thought of such a scenario, despite the heating of international relations. Kerbin had been a big powder leg since the first atomic bomb was denontated. From that moment on, the countdown began. The power keg had blown up, and the only survivors were the astronauts off world.

Jebediah Kerman, one of the few astronauts who had the fate to be offworld, looked through the tiny porthole on the Geosynchorus Orbital Base. Being a veteran of the Moon**** lunar landings some thirty years ago, his age was clearly showing. He was a legend among spacefarers, one could call him a "god among kings". None of that mattered now. The static on the onboard radios was deafening. A few hours ago, they had been alit with chatter and talk, but now, they only produced either silence, or static.

Passing behind the nighttime side of Kerbin five hours later, not one light was seen onboard the station.

Capricorn Five had departed the Geo-Station for the Mun five days ago, tall and proud in their Atlas spacecraft, and would've landed on Kerbin a hour before contact was lost. Jebediah was alone, a single Kerbal floating among the stars. He had a XK-3 escape shuttle docked, along with a more conventional Atlas ship, of the same variety Capricorn Five had used to go to the Mun.

Several dull metallic clangs from somewhere inside the station quickly pulled Jebediah from his musings. He cautiously exited the centerfuige, and grappled his way to the source of the noise. A can of beans had drifted away from its box, and had struck a oxygen tank. Shrugging, Jebediah quickly put the can back into its box and went back to the Centerfuige module, making sure to turn off the lights. He needed all the electric charge he could get.

Life was uneventful. There was no Mission Control, no new spacecraft, no satellites to service, no shuttles and no new astronauts coming too and fro on the never ending supply chain from KSC to the tin can he was now confined too. A day passed, a orbit was made. Life still went on. To entertain himself, Jebediah found himself talking to pictures on the station walls and reading various texts onboard. He could eat with the greenhouse module, drink with the hydraliucs equipment, and sleep and exercise in the Centerfuige. He could live alone. He ate, exercised, maintained, and slept in a monotony of a schedule he hoped would not be interrupted.

Several months into his isolation, there was a failure in the AV-173 communications set. Jebediah EVA'd and quickly fixed the issue. The unit failed again, and again. Eventually, Jebediah let it fail, and refused to fix it. In th darkness of space, there was no one to call or talk with anyways. His routine continued. The days flew by, then months, then weeks, then a whole year. Jebediah tried his best to maintain the whole station, but the once-grand space base was showing its age. A solar panel failed. Plumbing broke. The computer crashed. But nevertheless, he persevered on. Another year came and went. Still not a single sign of life on Kerbin. Jebediah was hoping for a band of survivors, a gang of outlaws, anything, any scrap or remnant of civilization he could talk to on the radio. There was nothing.

Halfway through his fifth year in the station, a micrometeorite impact ripped a gaping hole in a research module onboard. Jebediah was forced to seal off three further modules after the unforgiving vacuum deprived them of oxygen.

Another year came and went. The solar panels failed, followed by the lighting and plumbing. A fire broke out in one of the airlocks, and the module had to be completely ejected, spinning into the blackness of space.

With the station falling apart under his feet, Jebediah fled onboard the Escape Shuttle, the Atlas Rocket having ceased to function years ago.

Entering the cockpit of the shuttle, Jebediah looked back at the station that had been his home for eight years. Taking a deep breath, he undocked, and fired his thrusters retrograde. Watching the station become smaller and smaller, then disappear into the void, he sighed. It was his time to go home.